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Ohio Jewish Chronicle, 1991-05-30

Ohio Jewish Chronicle, 1991-05-30, page 01

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The Ohio Jewish Chronicle .
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VOLUME 69 ! MAY 30,19&
NUMBER 22 i7SIfrAN575t
DEVOTEP'TO AMERICAN AND JEWISH IDEALS
Foundation approves
funding for
special projects a
WHH Auxiliary to host
new memberhncheon
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BJ Sisterhood
installs new officers
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ftSihark receives ; •
$$iMffi Wallick Award
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loiltfrfed by LYJCC
OPERATION SOLOMON
Airlift of 14,000 Ethiopian Jews
accomplished in just 40 flights
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ByHughOrgel
TEL AVIV (JTA) - In
what appears to have been a
brilliantly' planned and flawlessly executed operation,
14,087 Ethiopian Jews, comprising over 3,000 families,
were airlifted from- Addis
Ababa to Israel last weekend
within some 30 hours.
Code-named "Operation
Solomon," the airlift was accomplished in a mere 40
flights, involving dozens of
aircraft.
Twenty-four of the planes
were Israeli air force jets, inr
eluding Boeing 707s and Hercules transport planes. Ten El
Al jumbo jets were used, and
three flights used planes
chartered from Ethiopia's
state airline.
At one point, there were 25
aircraft in flight simultaneously.
The first flight reportedly
arrived in Israel around 6
p.m. Friday local time. New
immigrants, many of who
kissed the ground as they left
^the plane, were greeted by top
officials of the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency.
' During the complicated
operation,v ten babies were
born ~ four or five of them in
mid-flight. No deaths were reported, and only 195 were
hospitalized upon arriving in
Israel.
Israeli identification mark
ings were painted over on all
aircraft, which were specially
adapted to cater to far more
than the usual number of
passengers.
The IDF planes used in the
airlift had their seats removed
and replaced with foam rubber mattresses on which the
huddled masses set and lay.
The El Al jet freighters had
had their cargo attachments
removed and replaced by narrow seats, on which the newcomers sat, four in a normally
two-seat row and seven in a
center-row fourseat arrangement.
One El Al 747 jumbo jet set a
world record by tranip)rting
1,087 passengers, twcKmd-a-
half times the normal capaci
ty. To do this, arm rests were
folded back, allowing six people to fill four seats. Three kitchens and eight of the 12 bathrooms on the plane were also
converted to seating.
The plane's manufacturer,
Boeing Corp., found it hard to
believe the number when in-
formsd of the record load.
But as one Egged bus driver
remarked, as he carried a
load of passengers to a reception center in northern Israel;
"We could not have done it
with burly Soviet immigrants,
each with five or six suitcases.
These thin and emaciated immigrants arrived with only
the clothes on their backs."
see AIRLIFT pg. 2